Small Things Considered

Winter Vacation

by the STC team — We take advantage of this being the season for re­joic­ing, and em­bark on a three-week win­ter vaca­tion. When we re­turn in 2023, on Ja­nua­ry 16th, we will en­ter the 17th year of Small Things Con­sider­ed. Read more →

Retrospective, July to December 2022

by the STC team — Keeping with tradition, here is a lightly annotated list of our forty-seven posts from the last half year. Read more →

Luciferin in Scintillons at Sea

by Janie — Summer through au­tumn is the time of year for ma­rine di­no­fla­gel­lates' famed light fes­ti­vals. If the con­di­tions are just right, the roll of an ocean wave or the push of a ka­yak paddle or the sway of your legs as you wade in deep­er is enough to set the wa­ters... Read more →

Applied Molecular Microbiology at Dubrovnik

by Roberto — If you are interest­ed in any sub­ject re­lated to small mo­le­cule na­tur­al pro­ducts of mi­cro­bi­al ori­gin, the "John In­nes/Rud­jer Boš­ko­vić Sum­mer School in Ap­plied Mo­le­cu­lar Mi­cro­bio­lo­gy" is for you. I know that course name is a mouth­ful so when I am de­scrib­ing the school to mi­cro­bio­lo­gists, I re­fer to it simp­ly as... Read more →

Scientific Publishing – eLife's Reviewed Preprints

by Roberto — Just over five years ago, George O'Toole and I had a con­ver­sa­tion about sci­en­ti­fic pub­lish­ing which we posted at STC. After some harsh com­ments cri­tiqu­ing for-pro­fit sci­en­ti­fic pub­lish­ers, jour­nal im­pact fac­tors, and pre­da­to­ry jour­nals, we turned to think­ing about so­lu­tions. George in­di­cat­ed some guard­ed... Read more →

Talmudic Question #200 ─ Our Twitter Poll

by Christoph — To cele­brate our two hun­dredth Tal­mu­dic Quest­ion "What is the lead­ing cause of bac­ter­ial or ar­chae­al death?" we made a poll on Twit­ter. Thanks to our fol­low­ers we re­ceived more than 100 votes, wow! We sug­gest­ed the fol­low­ing as pos­sible... Read more →

No Title [ just a very brief rant ]

by Christoph — We "em­pha­size the un­usual and the un­ex­pec­ted phe­no­me­na for which we have a spe­cial fas­ci­na­tion." And in fact, there are so many ex­cit­ing troves in the re­cent sci­en­ti­fic li­te­ra­ture ─ and in the ol­der no less! ─ that we could ea­si­ly blog three times a week... at least. But there are, occasionally,... Read more →